[The 19th. | THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 4.69 
“One morning in October, 1869, I was standing amid a small 
group of passengers on the deck of the ill-fated P. and O. ss. 
Rangoon, then steaming up the straits of Malacca to Singapore. 
We were just within sight, so far as I remember, of Sumatra. 
One of the party suddenly pointed out an object on the port bow, 
perhaps half a mile off, and drew from us the simultaneous ex- 
clamation of “The sea-serpent!”” And there it was, to the naked 
eye, a genuine serpent, speeding through the sea, with its head 
raised on a slender curved neck, now almost buried in the water, 
and anon reared just above its surface. There was the mane, and 
there were the well-known undulating coils stretching yards behind.” 
“But for an opera-glass, probably all our party on board the 
Rangoon would have been personal witnesses to the existence of a 
great sea-serpent, but, alas for romance! one glance through the 
lenses and the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root upwards, 
anchored in some manner to the bottom — a “snag” in fact. 
Swayed up and down by the rapid current, a series of waves un- 
dulated beyond it, bearmg in their crests dark coloured weeds or 
grass that had been caught by the bamboo stem.” 
“Tonorance of the shallowness of the straits so far from land, 
and of the swiftness of the current, no doubt led us to our first 
hasty conclusion, but the story, with Dr. Drew’s shows how prone 
the human mind is to accept the marvellous, and how careful we 
should be in forming judgments even on the evidence of our senses.” 
Mr. Anprew Witson, in his Leisure Time Studies, speaking of 
this hypothesis says: 
“Floating trunks and roots of trees, serving as a nucleus around 
which sea-weed has collected , and to which barnacles and sea-acorns — 
producing a variegated effect by reason of their light colour — 
have attached themselves in great numbers, have also presented 
appearances closely resembling those of large marine animals, swim- 
ming slowly along at the surface of the water. In one instance of 
this latter kind, related to me by a friend who was an actual 
spectator, the floating piece of timber assumed a shape imitating 
in the closest and most remarkable manner the head of some rep- 
tile, — by the same rule, I suppose, that in the gnarled trunks 
and branches of trees one may frequently discern likenesses to the 
human face and to the forms of other living things. In this latter 
instance, the floating object was perceived at some miles’ distance 
from the deck of a yacht; and even when seen through a telescope, 
and carefully scrutinized by men accustomed to make out the con- 
